Belgium Looks Set to Euthanize Children

In the face of widespread public indifference and a largely silent media, Belgium looks set on passing a law allowing doctors to kill terminally ill children.

Yesterday, the Senate justice and social affairs committee approved a draft bill allowing the practice. It will now pass to parliament where it will be voted upon in the coming months.

Three quarters of Belgians approve of the proposal, according to surveys, making it likely the bill will pass.

The proposed legislation would allow the euthanasia of terminally-ill minors so long as they are judged capable of deciding for themselves and are in pain that is "unbearable and cannot be alleviated", according to AFP.

A medical team would offer advice and their parents' approval would be required.

Belgium’s bishops and other religious leaders have warned the measure risks “destroying the functioning of society”.

“We are also opposed to suffering, whether physical or moral, and especially the suffering of children,” Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard, president of Belgium’s bishops conference, said in a joint statement with Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders last month.

“But to suggest minors can decide on their own euthanasia is to falsify their power of judgment and their freedom,” they added. “To suggest persons with dementia can also be euthanized is to deny their dignity and hand them over to the arbitrary judgment of decision-makers.”

Nirj Deva, a founding member of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, told ZENIT yesterday that “all Belgians ought to be terrified by the implications of this proposed law.”

“The irony of human history shows that when we start deciding which human lives are worthy of living, the moment inevitably comes when someone else makes that decision for us,” he warned. Deva said he believes the proposed law is the “skeletal face of healthcare rationing, disguised by a mask of false mercy and compassion.”

Belgium’s religious leaders said the proposed legislation risked “the growing banalisation of a very grave reality.”

“Instead of supporting a suffering person and gathering persons and forces around to help them, we risk dividing these forces and isolating the suffering person, branding them guilty and condemning them to death,” they said.

In 2012, Belgium recorded about 1,200 cases of euthanasia and the rate of killings has rapidly increased since legalisation in 2002. Last year, a mentally ill man serving 20 years for a double murder became Belgium’s first prison inmate to be euthanized.

In November 2012, the government announced plans to follow the Dutch in allowing euthanasia for Alzheimer sufferers.

Belgium’s religious leaders said all forms of suffering cause dismay, but to prescribe euthanasia for vulnerable people “radically contradicts their condition as human beings.”

“We cannot enter into a logic which will lead to destruction of society’s very foundations,” they said.

Catholics nominally make up three-quarters of the Belgian population, but secularism has long taken hold in the country and only one in 10 attends Church services.

Despite the alarming and previously unthinkable prospect of doctors – whose primary purpose is only to save and preserve life – being authorised to kill children, the world is being remarkably silent. But when doctors have been legally allowed to kill unborn children for so many years, perhaps this is all tragically inevitable.

Comments

This in my opinion is the direct result of the widespread rejection of Pope Paul VI OF Human Life in 1968 which talked about respect for life. The clergy and Bishops and prelates ignored it so than abortion became acceptable and than IVF CLONING Embryonic stem cell research same sex marriage and now euthanasia. It was the inevitable Culture of Death that Paul John Paul and even Pope’s from before that Pius XI in 1931. Looks like those who don’t lean from history repeat it. Paul VI clearly warned in HV that governments would use contraception as a weapon against their own citizens and that also includes sterilization campaigned in this country against minorities. Venerable Pops Paul was a Prophet as well.

Posted by Jerry on Friday, Dec 6, 2013 3:29 PM (EDT):

If “doctors,” “parents” and other adults have a problem with terminally ill (and not even terminally ill) children, then wouldn’t it make more sense to euthanize the person with the problem? I use that argument with pro-euthanaists. One I “debated” with one who said he couldn’t stand to see handicapped children “suffering,” even when those children were obviously very happy. Since he said that the solution to a problem was to kill, and he was the one having the problem, why didn’t he kill himself? He became very frustrated because he couldn’t answer. I use the same logical argument with pro-abortionists. Since it’s the pregnant woman who has the “problem” pregnancy, and her prenatal human offspring doesn’t, and killing is the solution, then wait for the baby to be born and kill the woman. End of problem.

Posted by bill melichar on Friday, Dec 6, 2013 1:34 PM (EDT):

Tragic. I imagine 100 years ago Pius X or 75 years ago Pius XI or 50 years ago B. John XXIII or 25 years ago Blessed JP II would have written an apostolic letter or sent a message or said something anything dircetly against this and to encourage the faithful to fight for the Gospel of Life. But today not a peep. Even more tragic. Quite the contrary we’re not supposed to be obsessed by this sort of thing. And so it will be.

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About Edward Pentin

Edward Pentin began reporting on the Pope and the Vatican with Vatican Radio before moving on to become the Rome correspondent for the National Catholic Register. He has also reported on the Holy See and the Catholic Church for a number of other publications including Newsweek, Newsmax,Zenit, The Catholic Herald, and The Holy Land Review, a Franciscan publication specializing in the Church and the Middle East. Follow on Twitter @edwardpentin